The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  The Islamism of Mawdudi’s school is not principled, but politically pragmatic. In Bangladesh Jamat-e-Islami activists are literally engaged in street battles against leftists, but in Britain Islamists from Jamat’s British front organizations are active members of George Galloway’s far-left Respect party. Front movements of the Arab Muslim Brotherhood are leading members of Respect too. Galloway was given a hero’s welcome at the London Muslim Centre after he ousted Oona King in a highly controversial election campaign in 2005.

  During the British local council elections of 2006 I supported my local Labour councillor’s successful campaign for re-election. While canvassing I learnt much about how Respect employed race and religion to help them win votes. Respect party Islamists exploited the nationalist identities of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in east London, referring to the war in Iraq and persuading them to vote according to colour, religion, and language, as if these are political beliefs in their own right. In some cases these tactics yielded results. Islamists I knew from my own past were elected as Respect councillors. At the same time the Christian People’s Alliance campaigned similarly among the Afro-Caribbean community, playing on their religious sensitivities. All the while Labour councillors I campaigned with shied away from confronting these issues. Foreign languages in campaign literature and canvassing were honoured with the title ‘community languages’. What’s wrong with English?

  The multiculturalism fostered by the Labour government had created mono-cultural outposts in which the politics of race and religion were now being played out before my eyes. A Respect activist outside a polling station asked me why I was campaigning for white Christian candidates. Was I? Since when had politics been reduced to this? Do all ‘white Christians’ think the same way? Besides, one of the two councillors in my ward was an atheist.

  I raised my concerns with a Muslim friend who arranged for me to have lunch with the president of a leading Islamist organization in Britain, a man known for his public condemnation of terrorism. Unaware that I was no longer an Islamist sympathizer, never mind an activist, he let slip that he considered that he saw nothing wrong in the destruction of the kuffar, or prayers that call for that destruction. I asked him how this could be when the Koran repeatedly acknowledges that the majority of the world’s people will not be Muslims, and pointed out that God has rejected extremist prayers for destruction for over forty years. ‘God will answer those prayers in good time,’ he replied.

  For how much longer, I ask, will we tolerate the hypocrisy of such people enjoying British life while calling for its destruction? When will Islamists halt this doublespeak?

  I returned to Britain because I believe it is my home. I want my children to grow up here. I do not want them to consider Islamism as an option, as I once did. So I worry when I see young girls, many below the age of eight, wearing hijab to primary schools. If hijab is a mechanism for modesty and an indication of sexual propriety, however debatable, then it belongs firmly in the wardrobe of adulthood. When Muslim parents send their young children to school thus attired it tells me that the hijab is losing its spiritual significance and is instead becoming a marker of separatist identity politics. I see young boys changing out of their school shirts and trousers into Saudi-style white flowing robes before heading off to the mosque in the evenings. Why is Gulf clothing, designed to ease life in the hot Arabian desert, being imposed on British children as a symbol of religion? What is wrong with Western clothes?

  Other, more insidious, Saudi influences are permeating British Islam. Wahhabism in Britain comes in many forms, as does Islamism. Today’s jihadis are Wahhabis who have taken up arms against the Saudi rulers and their backers, Western governments included. Many imams in our mosques are Saudi-trained. They appear as important guests at some of the largest Muslim events. Others visit from Saudi Arabia. Salman al-Audah, a firebrand cleric once jailed by the Saudi government and known for issuing fatwas for a jihad against Britain and America in Iraq in 2004, addressed a crowd of over 20,000 in London’s Docklands in late 2006. When al-Audah’s son, acting on his father’s fatwah, followed the thousands of young Saudis who rushed to Baghdad, his son was conveniently captured by border guards and returned home, out of danger. The hypocrisy of Wahhabism made headlines across the Arab world. Why are such people granted a platform in Britain?

  The ideology, however disparate, that led to the successful suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 and many similar though thwarted attempts since then is still alive and firmly rooted among Britain’s young Muslims.

  I returned to Britain to discover a sophisticated, entrenched form of Islamism and Wahhabism on the rise, but extremism is not limited to Muslims. The far right, much like Hizb ut-Tahrir, is rebranding itself and gaining new ground. I had not expected to be called a ‘f——Paki’ by West Ham fans during a football match within weeks of coming home. What the white majority in Britain take for granted, their sense of belonging, is not so easy for ethnic minorities.

  Since my return I have observed British Muslims being browbeaten by certain sections of the media and government, demanding ‘integration’ and an end to ‘parallel lives’. The implied accusation, of course, is that Muslims are guilty of terrorism and that an undefined ‘integration’ will put a stop to it.

  In mosques, after prayers, many of my Muslim friends rightly ask what we are supposed to integrate into. ‘Big Brother’ lifestyle? Ladette culture? Binge drinking? Gambling? Most Muslims are already upright Britons, contributing to their country as much as any other British citizen.

  When Faye and I return home from a night out and walk past heaps of rowdy, drunken teenagers vomiting on the streets we despair as much as anyone else. Anti-social behaviour in our cities, high rates of abortion, alcohol abuse, and drug addiction are abhorrent to all right-thinking people, not just Muslims. The neglect of the elderly, shunting them off to ‘care homes’, does not sit comfortably with most Muslims. When the centre of social life in modern Britain is the local pub, where do Muslims and others fit in? Can an orange juice ever be enough?

  Still, amid the clamour of lifestyle choices, political demands, social confusion, and religious extremisms, many British Muslims are quietly developing a rich, vibrant Muslim subculture in Britain, incorporating the best aspects of their multifaceted heritage: ethnic ancestry, British upbringing, Islamic roots. This harmony is borne out by the silent majority of law-abiding and loyal Muslims who work hard in business and the professions across Britain, not seeking to turn religion into politics. Such people help maintain the National Health Service, our schools, transport system, and other core areas of national life. They, not the jihadis, are the true heroes of British Islam.

  And all is not lost, for there are signs of a resurgence of interest in spiritual rather than political Islam. Large numbers of young British Muslims are rediscovering the traditional Islam of their parents. Descendants of one particular bloodline of the Prophet, represented by the much-loved Habaib from the Hadramaut valley in Yemen, have been touring Britain, re-injecting Muslims with love, compassion, and attachment to the Prophet. It was the Habaib who introduced moderate Islam to entire nations - Indonesia, for example.

  In gatherings remembering the Prophet’s birthday, or mawlid, replete with metaphysical meanings, they lead lovers of the Prophet in song and emulate the Beloved’s exemplary conduct. Mawlid gatherings are a highlight of the Muslim cultural calendar across the Muslim world, but are of no significance to Islamists. No one from the Muslim Council of Britain leadership ever attends. Yet these people, so distinctly out of line with mainstream Muslim practice, are effectively the voice of British Muslims.

  Disturbingly, that voice is often listened to by those who should know better. Iqbal Sacranie, a leader of the MCB, supported the fatwah against Salman Rushdie in 1989. His knighthood in 2005 illustrates that holding such opinions is no bar to official recognition in British society, regardless of what message this conveys to younger Muslims.12 Conversely, a well-trained Musli
m scholar, the late Dr Zaki Badawi, offered his home as sanctuary to the beleaguered author. Similarly, while some British Muslim women refuse to remove their face veils in public, or shake hands with the Metropolitan Police commissioner, the rector of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, arguably the highest authority on Muslim scripture, freely offers his hand to female visitors from the West. Such differences in attitude are rooted in the ability, or lack of it, to conceive the spirit of the Prophet’s teachings.

  Love and attachment to the Prophet is at the heart of a mawlid gathering, not the scriptural rigidity and mental paralysis of literalism. For me, the underlying scholarly methodology that endorses the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday signifies a more tolerant, inclusive, flexible approach both to scripture and to life.

  Without doubt, a British Islam is emerging. It remains to be seen whether it will be in harmony with the world in which it finds itself, or if it rejects and repels it. The direction we take at this critical juncture will determine the type of Islam we bequeath to future generations. The future of Islam is being shaped now.

  Afterword: What About America?

  The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and Respected stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.

  George Washington, 1783

  If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mahometans, Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists.

  George Washington, in a letter to Tench Telghman, 1784

  It was my first visit to the United States. I was expecting to be stopped at the airport, harassed, interrogated and perhaps detained. Since 9 ⁄11, Muslim communities across the globe are filled with horror stories of encounters at American airports. My friend from college days, Majid Nawaz, who had spent four years as a political prisoner in Egypt, was with me.Together we had attended countless anti-American rallies in Britain, and witnessed many US flag-burning rituals. Now, in our thirties, and after a decade in the wilderness, we had changed. But would America understand us? Would we understand America?

  Like good Brits, we patiently stood waiting in the long queue at Washington Dulles Airport. Suddenly, Majid’s name was called from the loudspeaker, telling him to go to the front of the line. Then mine. Were we in trouble? Majid had visited the United States recently, appearing as an expert witness for the Congressional Homeland Security Committee chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman. Majid had been one of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s most intelligent, vociferous, and articulate leaders, travelling to Pakistan, Denmark, and Egypt advocating the group’s ideas and setting up secret cells.The Hizb, in essence, was identical to al-Qaeda, differing only in terms of the tactics it chose to achieve the desired result: political power. Majid has been banned in several countries and is wanted by Pakistan’s ISI, their intelligence agency. But he had recently rejected extremism and, after years of study and reflection in prison, had become a public advocate for liberal democracy, using scriptural evidence to support peaceful Muslims - who represent the vast majority - in their struggle against religious extremism. His rejection of Hizb ut-Tahrir made headlines in the British press, and the British prime minister quoted Majid in parliament. But now we were in America, and during Majid’s recent trip, federal escorts had accompanied him everywhere, fearful that he might violate US security regulations and not quite sure what to make of him. Would he, would we, face the same fate again?

  An immigration officer at Washington Dulles Airport, accompanied by several colleagues, took us to one side, registered our passport details and asked the desk officer to clear us for entrance. Senior officials at the US Department of Homeland Security were expecting our arrival and wanted minimum kerfuffle. The polite, courteous conduct of the officers touched us both. But my mind was on the thousands of American Muslims who had been subjected to raids and arrests. Could we forget their plight?

  Outside the airport, I stood with Majid and was stupefied by the number of US flags I saw everywhere. Flying at full mast at several junctures in the car park, and then above the airport, and on cars and coaches, the stars and stripes were ubiquitous. Unlike Britain, America was proudly patriotic and unreservedly expressive of national pride.

  ‘Their flag is almost sacred to them, isn’t it?’ I said to Majid.

  ‘And extremists burn it all the time. Why did we do that, Ed? Why?’ he asked, trying to come to terms with how we had been sucked into extremism.

  ‘Why didn’t anybody stop us?’ I asked in response.‘We watched this happen in London, not Baghdad - what possessed us?’

  Majid and I recalled how several of our fellow activists became suicide bombers, were imprisoned, or created entire organisations that linked themselves to al-Qaeda. What started off as mere talk, as rhetoric, found expression in mass murder in several European capitals, including London and Madrid. The murder we had witnessed on our college campus a decade before the attacks on London’s subway on 7 July, 2005 was an unspeakable testament to the power of words.The talk of jihad, hatred, and anger never remains abstract, limited to ‘freedom of speech.’ It yields results.

  More than anything else, what worried Majid and me was the lack of awareness in the wider society of the root causes of extremism and of the lifestyle that fosters recruitment into extremist movements. Society’s demonstrated failure to grasp the urgency of the situation was also troubling, because that comprehension might precipitate policies and actions that could prevent young Muslims from becoming fanatical ideologues committed to creating a world dominated by Islamism, not Islam.To help fill this void, Majid and I started the Quilliam Foundation, the world’s first think tank committed to explaining and countering Islamist thought.

  We were in America to speak at Harvard and Princeton, at an array of Washington think tanks, and to meet Muslims on both the East and West coasts. We spoke with leading personnel at several government departments, US ambassadors, academic leaders, and students. And everywhere we went, we were asked a similar series of critical questions. Can America create home-grown terrorists? Will American Muslims, like British Muslims, attack their own homeland in the name of a false Islam? Britain is home to over 3,000 extremists: Can America be harbouring enemies without knowing it? The 9 ⁄11 hijackers hatched their plot in Europe: Are American-born Islamists capable of a similar monstrosity?

  My answers to these questions, after meeting quite a few American Muslims and consulting with American experts on these issues, are both yes and no.

  I say no because America is not Europe. The United States is, in several ways, in a much stronger position to prevent its Muslim population from becoming a sanctuary for hate-harbouring extremists. As a country, the United States accepts and even encourages public displays of religiosity, and an overwhelming majority of the population believes in one God known to Arab Christians, Jews, and Muslims as Allah. Contrary to a popular opinion influenced by right-wing polemicists, Muslims and followers of the other Abrahamic faiths do not believe in different Gods.This affirmation of religion in the public arena, which runs contrary to French and British privatisation of religion, allows for Muslims to fit in with the society, to be at home in America.

  Tony Blair had to wait until he left office to publicly acknowledge his previously held Catholic convictions. To have done so while he was in office would have cast him as a religious man of sorts, someone not entirely mentally composed. His chief of public relations, Alistair Campbell, had warned him that, ‘we don’t do God,’ and that journalists would poke fun at any notion of George Bush and Tony Blair ‘praying together.’ In the United States, George Bush regularly used scripture in his speeches and public comments and shamelessly exploited the religious right.

  Another important factor is that compared to most European countries, the socio-economic situation of most American Muslims is notably better. Muslim immigration to America largely consists of highly educated Arabs and Asians, the crème
de la crème of the Muslim world.The average American Muslim, for example, earns more than the average white American and is likely to be a doctor, banker, or professor. Muslim immigration to European countries, however, is dominated by a sense of revenge - the former subjects of European colonial powers seeking reparation. In Britain, first generation immigrants predominately arrive from poor, rural areas of India and Pakistan. A similar profile of immigration can be seen in France, with Muslims arriving from the former French colonies of Morocco and Algeria. Their dependence on the welfare state, reluctance to integrate and hostility towards the government and its agencies create a breeding ground for Islamist radicals. In 2008, a report carried out by the Fabian Society, under the auspices of British Muslim parliamentarian Sadiq Khan, suggested that only around a quarter of British Muslims are currently ‘economically active.’ According to the British government’s 2001 census, the proportion of Muslims who ‘have never worked or are long-term unemployed’ is five times higher than the national average. Alarmingly, 78 per cent of Bangladeshi and 73 per cent of Pakistani women in Britain are unemployed.As a nation, we seemingly refuse to address these issues lest we offend ethnic minorities. But unless we do, we risk amplifying these festering problems into national crises in years to come.

  European imperial hangover, combined with class snobbery, soft racism, and white ethnic superiority, makes it almost impossible for black and Asian children of immigrants to feel that we truly belong, that we are Europeans.We are not. Entire countries, Denmark or Sweden for example, still consider themselves ‘host nations’ for their ‘immigrant communities,’ despite three generations of Muslims and other immigrants who have settled there permanently. The Danish cartoon controversy, for example, was partly driven by the failure of Muslims to integrate into Danish society and subsequently to solve problems domestically. Instead, Denmark’s Muslim leaders boarded planes to marshal support against their country from Hamas, Hizbullah, and Saudi Arabia. On the streets of Copenhagen, I saw Majid threatened by Islamist thugs for advocating democracy to second generation Danish Muslims, whose default policy is to reject Denmark because it, in their opinion, has rejected them.They linger in the ghettoes of Copenhagen and other cities, economically inactive and socially excluded, hanging on to the fringes of Hizb ut-Tahrir radicalism, rejecting any notion of national identity and inching towards jihadism.